Repeal of discriminatory provision

I am puzzled by a Bill going through Parliament being labelled ‘a repeal of discriminatory provision’ against Roman Catholics and Jews.  It would allow Andy Burnham to advise the King about appointments in the Church of England.

Until 1829 Parliament had been made up exclusively of communicant members of the Church of England.  In that year it became possible for Catholics to be MPs too.  Similar provision for Jews, then atheists and others, were to follow later in the century.

Cardinal Newman dated the beginning of the Oxford Movement to a sermon preached by John Keble in the University Church four years later.  Keble’s sermon was provoked by Parliament’s decisions about the amalgamation of small diocese in the Church of Ireland (at that point still part of the established Church of England). 

He wasn’t expressing an opinion about this, but he feared the consequences of future decisions being made for the Church of England by those who were not in communion with it.

It drew him, and those caught up in the new movement, to return to a self perception of the Church of England not as taking its authority from the state but from its grounding in the life of the universal church in the period before what were perceived to be the mediaeval distortions in the Catholic church.

Meanwhile a safeguard remained in place that Church of England appointments of Bishops and others would not fall into the hands of a possible future Catholic (and later Catholic or Jewish) Prime Minister.  No provision was made to avoid appointments by, for example, an atheist or Hindu Prime Minister, possibly because such an eventuality was not envisaged.

By the time an atheist and a later a Hindu Prime Minister were recommending names to the Crown the passing on of such names had become a formality, which is perhaps why it did not cause a stir.  That may be where the mistake was made, and provision for others to act on behalf of a Prime Minister who was not a communicant member of the Church of England might have been considered then.

All this seems to have been forgotten.  Labelling the Bill as a repeal of discrimination completely overlooks any reflection on the nature of the Church of England as an established church, one is now a very different social context.  A thinker like Keble would be open mouthed at this miss.

What is more, in 1919 the Church Assembly, and later its successor body the General Synod, was given powers to make Measures which (if and when approved by Parliament) would have the forces of an Act.  Over a century later one might have expected new provision about how Bishops and some others are appointed coming from the Synod as a draft Measure and not from Parliament as a proposed Bill.  

Nobody seems bothered by this.  Possibly because few actually reflect on the underlying authority and identity of the Church of England, or are concerned that (a non-Anglican) Parliament appears to feel it can legislate for us.  Possibly because we think we can rely on the present conventions about the Prime Minster’s advice being a formality. 

Treating all this simply as an archaic technicality feels to me badly mistaken.

The picture is from a 1950s window in Grimsby Minster, where I have been back (with the Vicar’s permission) working with a history group.  Earlier windows in the Minster were lost in the blitz.  These are part of the Arma Christi tradition of displaying ‘the instruments of Christ’s passion’.  On the left, his seamless garment and the dice which gambled for it.  On the right, a hammer and pincers for knocking in and taking out the nails of the crucifixion.